Dusia, a first generation Ukrainian Canadian, says that she does not remember much about the famine in Ukraine of 1932-33. She was only five year old when the Soviet-imposed famine, also known by historians as the Holodomor, started raging in her home village. That was one of the most devastating national disasters of the Ukrainian people in all modern history. “My Mom went out to sell jewellery and buy some bread, but she never returned home”, – recalls Dusia, one of just a handful survivals among people living in central and eastern parts of Ukraine during the Holodomor. It is estimated that the total number of those who died from starvations when communists forced Ukrainian peasants into collective farms can be more than 10 million people
When the famine death toll reached 30,000 a day, Ukrainians were arrested for hiding a loaf of bread or a few potatoes. Any foreign aid was rejected and starving families were prevented from travelling to regions untouched by that man-made disaster.

Father Borys Gudziak, rector of the Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University, says that during the Soviet era, people were not permitted even to talk about the famine and the artificially orchestrated death of millions of people in Ukraine. Those who lost their parents, sisters, brothers, and friends, had to go through life without ever mentioning it by fear of persecution and by Soviet propagandist brainwashing. Many modern historian, the present parliament of Ukraine, and the government of 26 world nations share the opinion that the Holodomor can be referred to as an ethnic genocide. Under the Soviet leadership, the artificially-induced famine was targeting the entire Ukrainian nation as a social and political entity.

Unfortunately, the Russian government still refuses to acknowledge the role of Soviet communists in the famine. And, in Ukraine, people only now have started to understand all scope of that tragic disaster sweeping the Ukrainian land in the dark years of Soviet “collectivization”.